Protecting the U.S. Homeland: Fighting the Flow from the Southwest Border

Chair Higgins, Ranking Member Correa, and distinguished members of the committee: On behalf of the Department of Justice (Department), and in particular the over 9,000 employees working at the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss DEA’s work to save lives and to combat the deadly drug poisoning epidemic in our country.

Americans today are experiencing the most devastating drug crisis in our nation’s history. This is because one drug—fentanyl—has transformed the criminal landscape. Fentanyl is exceptionally cheap to make, exceptionally easy to disguise, and exceptionally deadly to those who take it. It is the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 to 45, and it kills Americans from all walks of life, in every state and community in this country. The criminal organizations responsible for bringing fentanyl into this country are modern, sophisticated, and extremely violent enterprises that rely on a global supply chain to manufacture, transport, and sell fentanyl, and rely on a global illicit financial network to pocket the billions of dollars in revenue from those sales.

DEA has been hard at work to undertake a transformation of its own to meet this moment. DEA has acted with urgency to set a new vision, target the global criminal networks most responsible for the influx of fentanyl into the United States, and raise public awareness about how just one pill can kill. We have transformed our vision by focusing on fentanyl—the drug killing the most Americans— and the criminal organizations responsible for flooding fentanyl into our communities—the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation (Jalisco) Cartel. We have transformed our plan by building an entirely new strategic layer—our counterthreat teams for the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco Cartel— that map the cartels, analyze their networks, and develop targeting information on the members of those networks wherever they operate around the globe. We have transformed our execution by providing that targeting information to our 334 offices worldwide, drawing from our global intelligence and law enforcement teams here and abroad, and working as One DEA to take the networks down. And we are seeing results—as demonstrated earlier this year with the indictment of 28 members and associates of the Chapitos network of the Sinaloa Cartel; the arrest of 3,337 associates of the Sinaloa and Jalisco Cartels in the United States who were responsible for the last mile of fentanyl and methamphetamine distribution on our streets and through social media; and the indictment of four chemical companies and eight individuals in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for providing criminal actors in the United States and Mexico with the precursor chemicals and scientific know-how necessary to make fentanyl.

The Drug Poisoning Epidemic

In 2022, nearly 110,000 people in the United States lost their lives to drug poisonings. Countless more people are poisoned and survive. These drug poisonings are a national crisis.

A majority of the drug poisoning deaths in the United States involve synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl, that are being distributed in new forms. Fentanyl is being hidden in and being mixed with other illicit drugs such as cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine. Drug traffickers are also flooding our communities with fentanyl disguised in the form of fake prescription pills. These fake pills often are made to appear legitimate using pill presses and marketed by drug traffickers to deceive Americans into thinking that they are real, diverted prescription medications. In reality, these pills are not made by pharmaceutical companies, but drug trafficking organizations; they are highly addictive and are often deadly. DEA lab testing reveals that 6 out of 10 of these fentanyl-laced fake prescription pills contain a potentially lethal dose.

The availability of fentanyl throughout the United States has reached unprecedented heights. In 2022, DEA seized more than 58 million fake pills containing fentanyl, and 13,000 pounds of fentanyl powder, equating to nearly 400 million deadly doses of fentanyl. This is enough fentanyl to supply a potentially lethal dose to every member of the U.S. population. These seizures occurred in every state in the country.